


vitriol

by bee_kind



Series: House of Sen [2]
Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: Dubious Consent, Implied/Referenced Incest, JAOCP, Jupiter Ascending OC Project - Freeform, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-07
Updated: 2015-09-22
Packaged: 2018-03-29 12:44:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3896779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bee_kind/pseuds/bee_kind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or, why marrying a space goddess and a planet-hoarding dragon is an awful idea and a terrible attempt at a power play</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. madame mephistopheles

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted to do a bit of exposition on Daedalus Nona and her relatively brief marriage to Balem so, yeah.
> 
> Just as a little disclaimer, this isn't gonna be all sunshine and butterflies. Nona thinks of herself as a literal goddess and is extremely prejudiced against non-senni people {basically people who aren't from her houses nine clans or splices manufactured by their scientists}. She was also in love with Seraphi who is pretty much true to popular headcannon and is more than a little pissed that she's been pawned off to Balem in favor of the younger Abrasaxs. 
> 
> Balem is gonma be darker than he was in the movie. This is still when actual legit Seraphi is still alive, so she still has a huge influence on him. Also, my head canon is that all that implied space-oedipal stuff from the film wasn't just implied and there was actually junk going down. Be forewarned, this is probably gonna squick you out.
> 
> Rating will change in later chapters.

She’d loved her too much.   
  
She’d loved her too much and had gotten far too wound up in their game to realize what was happening until Seraphi was holding all the cards and she was trapped in foolish promise. It would have been easy, she thought, to leave; to break her promise as easily as the first primary of House Abrasax had broken her heart, but Daedalus Nona was an honorable woman and she was not a liar. Even now, tangled up in her bed with Seraphi purring her treachery in her ear, she could not break her promise and push her away.

"...Daedalus. Daedalus, are you listening?" Her fingers were tracing circles up over her hip and across the flat plane of her stomach, trying to draw her back in. She must've felt the Sen goddess's irritation. She'd leave the bed soon. "Daedalus...?" She reached for her, trying to pull her closer. The taller woman rolled away, slipping out of the anti gravity field and back down onto solid ground. Her every move was sharp and precise, her military background showing through the practiced graces of an entitled. She was angry, and she dared not speak for fear of the lashing her tongue would deal to her loved one. She heard the woman sigh, saw her roll over onto her stomach out of the corner of her eye and heard her pad softly to her. Felt her wrap her arms around her midsection. "Come now, Daedalus, don't be childish-"

" _ **Childish?**_ " She'd always had limited patience and the goddess could control herself no longer. "You who toss about the love of one who would freely give it, playing them to your needs as you deem fit, you would dare call _me_ childish?" The ninth recurrence of Daedalus Prima ripped herself out of her lover's arms and began dressing, snatching jewelry and clothing up alike. "I am not one of your _children_ , Seraphi, that you would manipulate me. I do not bend to your whims."

"Oh, Daedalus..." She could strike her, if she wanted. Toss her to the floor and end her right there, but Seraphi's hands were sliding up over her arms, drawing her closer, closer, and back to bed. "...you need me as much as I want you around." Seraphi wanted her to toy with, to use up and then to toss away, and Daedalus would let her over and over again because she was the only living being in the universe who came close to scratching up against the near eternity Daedalus Nona had lived. She was the only one who understood the great burden on ninety-two millennia.  
  
"Do not expect me to be kind to the boy. I am doing this for you and because I am of my word." Seraphi traced the sharp lines of her jaw, the tight tendons in her neck.  
  
"Treat him as I treat you." Daedalus scoffed.  
  
"He might not live very long if I do."

**  
**  



	2. an ever-present, growing game

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seraphi informs her eldest that he's to be pawned off.

"Good Boy."She purred at him, his jaw clamped in her hand, jewels glittering on pale fingers. Her nails were cutting into his cheek, pressing hard in a way he was sure wasn't accidental. She had him on his knees before her throne, the only way she'd ever let her children come to her. Or, at least, her son. Kalique was still young, head still full with innocent thoughts and love for her mother. She was curled up now, in her mother's lap, sleeping and clutching at the front of her dress.

 

Balem envied her. Her peaceful sleep, her proximity to their mother, her innocence. All things he'd had once and lost to the deep vacuum of Seraphi's demands. He tried his best to meet them, to satisfy her voracious appetite for love and attention, but he always failed. Always. The scars on his back were testament enough to that.

 

"Balem..." Her voice was light and airy as she stroked the side of his face with her thumb. "...you love me, don't you?"

 

"Yes, Mother."

 

"And you'll do what I say if it'll make me happy?" Something his chest seized up at her words. Was she giving him an opportunity to prove himself? To curry some favor and bask in the cold green glow of her gaze? Thinking him hesitant,Seraphi asked again,voice a hair more forceful. Anyone else would've missed it. Anyone who hadn't spent nigh twenty millennia with her wouldn't have heard. "You do want your mother to be happy, don't you Balem?"

 

"Yes, of course, Mother."

 

"And you'll do anything?"

 

"Anything." Balem made the mistake of leaning his head into his mother's touch and was met with a slap across the face, her nails biting into his cheek. He gritted his teeth together and clutched at his face. He didn't cry out; she hated that. Kalique appeared to have been stirred by the noise and she looked down at him with her half-asleep eyes cold and uninterested in the man at her feet. Seraphi rose, red gown pooling around her feet.

 

"I have arranged a contract with the Senni Empress. In order to merge our respective house's assets, there will be a marriage." The thought of someone putting their hands on Seraphi had always made his stomach twist, but to know that she was going to marry the woman she'd debased herself made him...What was this feeling in his stomach? Something vile and burning- "This time next year, you will be wed."

 

"What?" His bloodstream had chilled, ice water now making it's way through his veins. "Mother, I thought-"

 

"You thought what? That I was going to marry her. Balem, you're too old to be so naive. If I do marry her and one of us dies, what do you think will happen then?" He knew what would happen; the lessons his mother had forced him to attend about entitled politics had not gone to waste.

 

"The Council of Inheritance rarely recognizes late in life marriages in dividing up wills, especially if no children were produced." His mother offered him a frigid, glittering smirk.

 

"Good _boy_ , Balem, you remember." She descended the dias slowly, Kalique still slung over her hip and approached her eldest son, seizing his jaw in her hand. "So, do you know what you're going to do? You're going to marry Daedalus Nona, you're going to bury yourself in all her affairs and you're going to fuck her raw until she bares you little princes and princesses-" His blood was on her fingers, little rivulets from where she'd raked them across his face. It stung but he let it. It was proof that he did still have some effect on her after all. "-and then you're going to kill her. Do you understand?" Balem swallowed hard , before meeting Seraphi's eyes. If he did this, there would be no going back, no recanting should he be unable to continue. He'd have to force himself.

 

"Yes, mother."

 

She smiled at him and it made the whole ordeal worth it.


	3. the relative calm in relation to a hurricane

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short little chapter.

She would’ve rather there been no ceremony.  
  
Daedalus Nona was not like her prior incarnations in that respect; she did not want for lavish balls and gaudy ceremonies that served only to honor her. They were a waste of her time and her priest’s time and her people’s, but she indulged them the holy days. The Festival of Stars and Na Abranna’i Mecina she wouldn’t avoid. Those were tradition and had been for thousands of years, but she would not begin holy days just to celebrate herself. It  was the highest form of pretension, but she’d inadvertently begun one for herself. The marriage of a goddess was cause for celebration, and once her people had found out, they wouldn’t let the idea go.

  
The media circi had only inflamed her people’s desire for celebration and before she could get a lid on what was going to happen, her citizens were already rejoicing and paying tribute and begging for a festival. She couldn’t deny them. The Sen clan was a formal and strict people, but any chance to celebrate was treated with the fervor of a child and the utmost extravagance. They spared no expense. It was a shame, then, that all their planning and hoping and dreaming would be wasted on a man who understood very little about their culture and a sham of a wedding.

The porcelain boy before her was a wretch.

Balem Abrasax, first primary of his house, Seraphi's bastard. The thought of him made her lip curl and something in her stomach twist. Pretty, pretty little wretch. Goddesses and Empresses did not feel jealously; Senni women did not turn their eyes to another in longing. Queen of a thousand worlds, ninth holy recurrence of Daedalus Prima and she was livid over the presence of an Abrasax child. She should've been ashamed. She should’ve let the guilt of her conduct choke her until she regained some semblance of propriety, but she didn’t. She let herself boil.

She didn't want him.  
  
She didn’t want him, and it was understandable why she didn’t. Would the stars shackle themselves to a candle? Would the void submit to the meager dark of a shadow? Why, then, was she to debase her own sanctity in favor of this boy? She knew the answer and once more she willed a thousand thousand years of curses down upon Seraphi.   
  


"Lord Abrasax."

"Empress."

His greeting was frigid.

He didn't want her either.

Good.

 **  
** She stood as near to him as she’d allow herself to be, on the other side of the seven-foot wide corridor, shoulder nearly brushing the wall and her attendants beside her. He stood opposed, dressed in the deep reds and burnished golds his mother preferred. They did not suit him, just as the white dress she’d been made to wear did not suit her. White, in her people’s tradition, was for the pure and the innocent. Daedalus was neither. She was an ancient war deity and the blood of a thousand nations was on her hands.  
  
She heard the trumpets first, a deep, brassy hum just beats before the priests began their singing. Daedalus closed her eyes. They were to be married in the Senni tradition. They’d be married his people’s way some other time. He reached for her hand to begin the walk, but she cut her eyes at him.   
  
“Let me make this abundantly clear, Lord Abrasax: This is the first, last and only time you will ever put your hands on me.” She laced her fingers through his, obsidian and alabaster locked tight. “Should you ever make the mistake of touching me without permission, you will find your temporary lapse in judgement being corrected quite painfully.” A look of mild disgust rippled over his face.   
  
“Please, your majesty, flattery doesn’t suit you. I have no cause to ever touch you.”  
  
“I know what she told you to do.”  Something like panic flashed in his eyes for the briefest second. “You will not touch me.” She repeated once more, before turning back to front and beginning their walk. “There will be no children, Lord Abrasax. You will not gain any of my assets should I suffer an untimely death and you will at no point, ever share the same bed as me, that will never change.” The boy clenched his jaw but continued forward, toward the archway and the massive temple and the cheers of thousands of Senni.   
  
“Nothing is forever, your majesty.” In her life, Daedalus had fought many battles and had earned many had-won victories, but this would be a war she had not prepared for. Her fingers tightened around his, nails biting into the flesh of his hand as they stepped into the light. A glittering smile overtook her lips the second she saw the flash of Media Circus cameras. She was a conqueror and an empress, and she would not lose to Balem.


End file.
